Here’s the deal, you guys, when I joined the team back in 2014, I was fulfilling a dream born out of hanging out in the comments on my lunch break, that APW could one day actually be my… job? And it happened, and now I have no time ever to hang out in the comments. When I took the position I knew nothing about digital publishing or advertising, but I knew that I loved small business owners, and truthfully, that is the lifeblood of this job. I’ll tell anyone who asks that I’m not an advertising manager, I’m a matchmaker, and I get to help match small businesses with amazing clients, and it makes my heart sing.
BUTTTT, time goes on, I’ve been here for four years now, and I’m moving on to a new position at APW. (I see you, promotions!) But that means that I am fiercely committed to finding someone who shares my love for small business owners and my enthusiasm for the excellent wedding vendor matchmaking we do here at APW.
The full job listing is below, but before we get into the nitty-gritty, here’s one note I’d like to make: APW hires as much on potential as on experience. We care equally about your ability to problem-solve and get shit done as we do about relevant experience. So if you can demonstrate a workplace history of kicking ass, but have never worked in marketing or publishing before, please apply (though kicking ass with relevant experience will obviously not be turned away).
Here’s what we’re looking for:
Marketing Associate at A practical wedding
APW is hiring a part-time associate to run the day-to-day operations of our small business advertising department. This is a part-time job, and we’re looking for someone in the Bay Area who can work from our office in Oakland (flex time, with the ability to work from home semi-regularly). We’re looking for a customer service whiz kid, who loves strategizing and solving other people’s problems. Bonus points if you’ve had a few years behind a desk in an office (even if that’s successfully running your own small business from your kitchen table).
WHAT YOU’D DO
APW’s small business advertising program consists of 60 front-page sponsors and 300 vendors (and growing). Your job would be to support the work of both the Chief Revenue Officer and Advertising Manager in making that happen. You’d be responsible for:
- Being our small business advertiser’s main point of contact from the first email, through the onboarding process, through years of advertising and growth (our sponsors tend to stick around for a long time!).
- Managing billing for both our front-page sponsors and our vendor directory members.
- Managing our Vendor Directory database, including processing new applications, reviewing updates, managing subscriptions and renewals/expirations, and helping to execute improvements to the database.
- Managing our sponsored posts and social media boosts from sales and scheduling to execution to performance analysis.
- Help execute our advertiser newsletter and other education and sales tools.
WHO YOU ARE
This is an entry-level position, with room for growth. And we mean that when we say it. All of the employees at APW have worked their way up from entry-level positions (seriously, all of them). And while we’d love to hire someone with previous customer service experience, it’s not required. We’d rather have someone with the right skill set who can train up fast. Here are some things that should describe you:
- Your main thrill in life is problem solving.
- You want to play on a team. (Duh. You’ll love our team.)
- You are really good with people and adept at making them feel cared for. (INFJs strongly encouraged.)
- You’re an excellent and fast communicator, in person and in writing. Your email skills are aces and Inbox Zero is your norm.
- You’re equally skilled in empathy and enforcement. Can you enforce a deadline and have the other person thank you for it? Perfect.
- You can write well. (Bonus points if you can write well from a marketing perspective.)
- You have a significant amount of tech-savvy and are a pro at figuring out how things work. AKA you’re the person people hand their phone or computer to when they can’t get something to work.
- You’re naturally organized and incredibly self-motivated.
- You have the memory of an elephant. APW currently has a rotating roster of ~350 small business advertisers, and even though we have systems to keep track of them all, it helps immensely to be able to store a lot of info in your head.
- You’re great at managing a lot of projects at once without losing your cool. In fact, you get bored if you don’t.
- You love small businesses and small business owners and get what it takes to run one.
- You love APW and get what it’s about.
- You want to grow with the site, wherever it may be going.
BONUS POINTS
- You’ve planned a wedding. And/or (though ideally and) you have worked in the wedding industry.
- You already read APW and can remember your favorite post from two years ago.
- You have major WordPress, WooCommerce, and/or database management skills.
- You have photography skills, graphic design skills, or any other great skills we should know about.
- You live and breathe Instagram. Or Twitter. Or Facebook. Or all of the above.
- You’re a WOC, or represent some other form of diversity (or as we call it internally, “normalcy”).
WHAT WE’RE LIKE
Our office works hard (in emergencies, we hunker down and crush deadlines), but also we prioritize healthy lives and making it home for dinner (almost every night) and out to a dance class (some days). We are unapologetically feminist, and our team chat ranges from puppy GIFs to politics to the myriad reasons Facebook is ruining our lives.
THE FINE PRINT
Location: Oakland, CA, a mix of working at home and working in our office in East Oakland
Hours: Part-time (25ish hours per week)
Salary: Entry level, commensurate with experience, starting around $20 per hour.
HOW TO APPLY
Please submit all applications to team (at) apracticalwedding (dot) com. Please make the subject of your email “Marketing Associate” so that we can keep track of incoming applications. In your application, please include:
- Cover letter: Tell us your experience, what you’d bring to the role, your working style, and your relationship with the APW brand. Please also include three new ideas for increasing revenue at APW, included as bullet points in your cover letter. These could be sponsored content ideas, or other revenue ideas. We encourage you to think outside the box.
- A sample outreach email you might write if we asked you to woo a potential sponsor. (Think: You saw their work on Instagram and they should really be advertising with us.)
- A Pinterest board of 25–35 pins showing the style of content that you feel reflects the intersection of your aesthetic with the APW aesthetic.
- Two or three references.
Note: If you are selected for an interview, you may be provided additional assignments as part of the interview process.
We will be accepting applications on a rolling basis—and we can’t wait to hear from y’all.
